Читать книгу An Affair of State онлайн

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The letter from the Department reached him there. His application had been approved. He shortly would be asked to report for the oral examination. "Well," said Stud, who was watching him, "you're in! I can tell by your face. You'll have to do something about that. Diplomats have poker faces."

"Not yet," Jeff said. "Not hardly. Four out of five flunk the oral. It's supposed to be like the Spanish Inquisition in a one-hour capsule."

"You won't flunk it. You teethed on the stuff."

"Then there's the physical, and the final security check."

"Physically," Stud estimated, "you'll be the finest specimen in State. They'll keep you in Washington, and use you once a year to model striped trousers at the English garden party." He was okay physically, Jeff knew, so far as any Army medic could tell. Between the ages of eight and twelve his frame had sprouted out of his clothes every six months, to his father's astonishment and dismay, until in his junior year at Princeton he stretched to two and a half inches over six feet. His weight hadn't kept pace in school and college, but he had filled out in the Army so that now he was a fairly hard hundred and seventy pounds. But there was something about his physical condition--or maybe it was mental--that he never mentioned. It was a souvenir from September, 1944. It was very simple. Sudden, loud noises blacked out his mind and panicked his will and on occasion menaced his dignity as a human being.